KEN GONZALES-DAY: PROFILED

This artist book is the first in a series of PAC (Photographic Arts Council) Prize editions, published by the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lead support is generously provided by the Photographic Arts Council of LACMA. The PAC Prize acknowledges the central role played by books in the history of photography. It is awarded biennially to photographic artists or curators whose development will be fostered by a publication.

In this conceptually driven photographic project, Gonzales-Day looks to the depiction of race and the construction of whiteness as points of departure from which to consider the evolution and transformation of Enlightenment ideas.

PAC Prize winning-artist Ken Gonzales-Day lives and works in Los Angeles. His photography-based interdisciplinary and conceptual practice explores the history of the medium, the construction of race, and the limits of representation, ranging from the origins racial profiling to museum display. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, his previous publication, Lynching in the West, 1850-1935, offers a critical look at the legacies of Western landscape photography. Recent solo exhibitions include USCD University Art Gallery, San Diego; Getty Research Institute Scholars Common Room, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Las Cienegas Projects, Los Angeles; and Pomona College Museum of Art, Pomona, CA; and group exhibitions at Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Forthcoming exhibitions will appear at Fred Torres Collaborations, New York; Tufts University Art Gallery, MA; and Encuentro Internacional de Medellin, Columbia. Gonzales-Day is the recipient of a COLA 2011 Individual Artist Award, Los Angeles; Visiting Scholar/Artist-in-Residence, Getty Research Institute, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Senior Fellowship, Latino Initiatives Program, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; and Creative Arts Residency, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, among others. He earned a MFA at UC Irvine, CA, and a MA in Art History at Hunter College, CUNY, New York. He is currently Chair and Professor of the Art Department at Scripps Collage, CA.

Lecture Information:

Profiled: Race and Whiteness in Sculpture from Frederick the Great to Edward Kienholz

Award-winning artist and Scripps College professor Ken Gonzales-Day presents his take on Edward Kienholz's Five Car Stud, juxtaposing Gonzales-Day’s own recent work, which examines how artists construct racial identity. No newcomer to the subject of racial politics, Gonzales-Day’s book, Lynching Photographs: California exposed unknown chapters in the state’s history. There will be a book signing in the Art Catalogues Bookstore (Ahmanson Building, Level 1) immediately following the discussion.

Brown Auditorium | Tickets required—available one hour before program

Concurrent exhibitions of Ken Gonzales-Day's body of work, Profiled, on view at Tufts University Art Gallery through November 20th and Fred Torres Collaborations through November 12th.